Who'll speak up for the poorest tabloid reader? Er, the broadsheets

Newspapers are supposed to represent the interests of their core readers. But in the wake of the budget, both the Guardian and Independent are angry on behalf of a working class that barely acknowledges their existence

The Sun asked the crucial question: "Who will be talking about the budget with the World Cup on TV?" Which is probably why, for all the cries of "agony" and "loathsome brutality" unleashed in print and via TV screen, the biggest apparent demo of the week – stretching far down Regent Street on Friday morning – was made up of punters anxious to plonk down £400-plus for the new iPhone 4. No doubt it will all get much crunchier very soon; but in the meantime, for politicians and pundits, there are one or two things to sort out.

Is this, as Chancellor Osborne claims, a "progressive" budget designed to be as "fair" as dissonant Lib Dems could possibly wish? The Times thought so on day one. "The Treasury's tables suggest that the richest 10% of the population … will pay more than the others as a proportion of their net income" – which is "clearly the right thing". It illustrated the ferocious impact of the VAT increases by revealing that the tasting menu at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck will rise from £150 to £153.19 on 4 January.

The Mail, by contrast, saw quite different victims wincing in the line. "Middle classes WILL suffer most", it grumped across two whole pages. And meanwhile the Guardian, with a little help from Institute for Fiscal Studies post-match analysts, concluded that the burden of this "block-headed and callous" budget "falls heaviest on the poor".

So, you pay whatever money you think you have left, invest in a new app for handy adjectives, and go into battle for the interest groups – from moneyed and highly educated right down the scale – that read you most intensively: ABC1 readers for the top persons' Times (1,523,000 of them, on the latest National Readership Survey count, against a mere 245,000 at C2 and below) and 3,168,000 ABC1s for the Mail, against 1,713,000 C2DEs. If there are spirits to be lifted and sacrifices to be made, then you talk to those who read you first. You're supposed to be on their side.

Except that a few weeks of coalition confusion seem to have tangled some of those links. No paper has more C2DEs than the Sun – 4,865,000 against 2,885,000 ABC1s – but it's backing the Osborne squeeze as enthusiastically as a puppy with a new rubber bone. The people at the bottom (or rather just above bottom, because few people in true poverty can afford to buy any newspaper) are getting jam tomorrow from their beloved Bun. And (apart from the Mirror) the papers coolest on this budget, the Independent and the Guardian, are also the papers with fewest readers in the most afflicted categories. Six out of seven of their readers are ABC1. The people whose affairs they defend most vehemently barely register their existence.

It's a curious twist of fate in the wake of a curious election result. The Lib Dems, well worth a vote eight weeks ago, now belong to the callous classes. The poverty-stricken find their champions at £1 a copy. Nearly eight million Sun readers discover a paper peddling hardship at 30p an issue.

Maybe, you might hazard, some of the loudest Guardian and Independent voices are public service managers, teachers and lecturers facing a very lean 2011 – producers rallying to their clients' banner. But that's too damned mechanistic to be true in an excited wash of ideas: and at least their eloquent distress shifts the debate forward. Boring nest-feathering means boring copy. And the sooner the harsh light of the Sun shines on its cash-strapped readers, the merrier that debate will be.